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Your video is up and running, you’re starting to rack up views. What’s next? How do you actually measure the success of your video project? Before you start measuring your video’s success, you must define what success means to you and your business. Hopefully, you set up a goal for your video project when you were creating your content. And you kept that goal in mind as you came up with a distribution strategy. Now’s the time to see if it’s all working. The key is find the right metrics to measure success. Was your ultimate goal to increasing brand reach, engage with your viewers, drive traffic to your website?

Engagement can mean many different things. From social shares to comments to how long a viewer stays watching the video. Watch time is a great way to measure your audience’s engagement. Ideally, your viewers will stay engaged throughout the entire length of your video. Most video platforms let you track your video’s watch time (the average amount of time viewers spend watching your video) or at least, whether or not viewers finished watching your video. YouTube and Facebook’s metrics go more in depth and let you see your viewers average engagement throughout the length of your videos with their Audience Retention metric. When looking at this metric you want to see a constant horizontal line from the beginning to the end of your video. If your purpose is to drive viewers to respond to a Call-to-Action (CTA) at the end of your video, then you need to make changes to ensure the viewer stays engaged until the end. This may mean revisiting your content, even, reconsidering the length of your video. The faster you can get to the point and deliver value to your viewer, the more likely your video is to succeed. Now, let’s talk about clicks.

Click Through Rates To make this a proper click-through discussion, your videos need to be clickable. If they are not, then there still needs to be some way to make sure your viewers followed your call to action. Perhaps you create a customized URL for each video or track in bit.ly. Most likely, your video will have a Call-to-Action (CTA), whether that is a link to your website, a sign-up request, or an ad to buy a product or service – and if it doesn’t then it should. The Click-Through Rate is the percentage of viewers that clicked on a Call-to-Action in your video. This metric helps you keep track of the effectiveness of your CTA. If you’re getting views and viewers are staying engaged, but your video still is not driving action then you may need to tweak your Call-to-Action. Make sure you’re sharing video content with a clear and strong call-to-action that is valuable to your target audience.

Beyond the Click We’ve talked a lot of looking beyond the view in other words making sure you are tracking metrics that are more than just views. How about beyond the click? Essentially, the goal is to turn your leads into customers. Go a step further and see what actions viewers are taking after they watch your videos by using your website’s analytics tool. Are your videos driving traffic to your website? And is that leading to more sign-ups or more conversions? Video metrics are a powerful tool that can pinpoint areas where your video needs some sprucing up and whether or not the content is engaging for your target audience. Choose your metrics wisely and keep a clear goal in mind when analyzing the data. If your video is not performing the way you expected, using the right metrics will help you identify the problems and make the necessary tweaks to get your video back on the track to success. Yes. We have highly simplified this post in order to get you thinking about video differently. There are tons of other strategies to make sure your videos are indeed driving the results. Please feel free to ask us any questions you may have… happy to help!

Need a little more? Please fill out the form below to get access to a video where Mad Bear’s President, Glenn Zimmerman, gives you a more in depth look at how our video strategy can bring your business mad results.

_____________________________________________________________________________ About the Author: Roshni Hannon Contact: roshni@madbearproductions.com Her name means “light” and that is what she is… high energy, bright and fast. And yes… she does run regularly. While we’re not sure what she is running from (perhaps her two young kids) we know she’s covered a ton of ground. She was the Executive Producer for an award winning and number one rated morning show in Tampa for years. And now, she uses her unique blend of organization, storytelling and curiosity to help Mad Bear clients find their stories. Think of her as an architect, a story architect.

I play chess with my son. He’s 8. And he’s pretty good. He’s beaten me fair and square a few times. It got me thinking. What’s his strategy? So I asked. His answer was simple: Keep the King Alive. Strategy doesn’t have to be complicated, but it has to work for YOU.

We get into conversations with marketers all the time about their video and they usually start and end the same. While they’re excited about video, when we ask them about video strategy, there’s usually a long pause which is generally an acknowledgment of “we don’t have a strategy….” Our follow-up question is typically something like, “do you know how well your videos are working for you?” we typically get the same long pause. In order for your videos to deliver you’ve got to have a personalized strategy.

No two strategies are the same. At Mad Bear Productions we have a specialized three-prong approach to nailing a video strategy you’ll not only love, but one that you can be proud of.

Here are the three things to consider:

1. Content: What is your story? And how will you tell it?2. Distribution: Who are you trying to reach and how are you going to do it?3. Metrics (analytics and reporting): Let’s make sure it’s working and learn from the numbers.

For the purposes of this article, we are going to focus on Content.

Humanize. Use video to inspire, entertain, and connect on a more personal and emotional level. Get creative with using video to deliver fun, approachable, and humanized content campaigns. Or deliver a personalized video campaign that literally brings each viewer into the story in a way that’s relevant, interesting and memorable. Try some things out and diversify how you use video content, and you’ll start to discover what your most powerful stories are, and what your audience really cares about. It’s about building your brand in way that makes you feel proud and that grabs your audiences attention. We produced a series of videos for Valspar to help paint a story that let’s people know they stand for more than color.

“If you aren’t sure what to do or how to do it. Just be true to yourself and your brand. The most important thing is to make sure you are being genuine about what you are showing. If you aren’t being genuine, it likely won’t work.”

-Glenn Zimmerman, CEO Mad Bear Productions

Be (A Little) Daring. We are not suggesting you throw caution to the wind and produce something outrageous that will scare your customers. But you have to stand out. And to stand out you have to take some risks. Consider adding a splash of humor, maybe choose some music you normally wouldn’t. Choose an approach that is a little bit out of the box. To help a Cyber-Security firm launch a complex piece of technology, check out how we used Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

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“But don’t do something unexpected and different just for the sake of it. Make sure you stand out for a reason and most importantly… that the reason matters to your audience.”

-Glenn Zimmerman, CEO Mad Bear Productions

Do something unconventional, but do it to connect with people in a more emotional way (see Humanize above). If you’re uneasy at the thought of trying something, don’t give up just because you are scared. Take a breath and see it from the users standpoint. It may accomplish the job better.

Make it Interactive. In general, we find that marketers tend to be conservative in their use of video content. Explainer videos and educational webinars are pretty common now, since marketers know that video is the best way to educate given its high retention rates. It’s going to be tough to get anyone excited about your video strategy if you’re producing another screen capture video with a voice-over. But you know what they might get excited about? If you delivered an interactive video with survey questions to really engage your audience. Choose your own adventure style videos are another great way to get some engagement. What else? Well, here is one video from a campaign we completed with Northwell Health. This was one of several videos used to encourage the viewer to vote for one of three different innovations in healthcare. Nearly 500,000 votes later… success.

“Don’t feel pressure to use the latest and greatest technology in order to be interactive. The goal is purely to engage the viewer. If the interaction accomplishes that… you have succeeded”

-Glenn Zimmerman, CEO Mad Bear Productions

Overall, a video strategy keeps you from creating aimless content. Your videos should have a purpose aligned with your business goals. So, now you have your story. Stay tuned for our next blog which will focus on how you get the right people to see it!

Her name means “light” and that is what she is… high energy, bright and fast. And yes… she does run regularly. While we’re not sure what she is running from (perhaps her two young kids) we know she’s covered a ton of ground. She was the Executive Producer for an award winning and number one rated morning show in Tampa for years. And now, she uses her unique blend of organization, storytelling and curiosity to help Mad Bear clients find their stories. Think of her as an architect, a story architect.